


Confessions

by Kozakura_dono



Category: Bleach
Genre: AU, Dark, Headcanon, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7049350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kozakura_dono/pseuds/Kozakura_dono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silence can hide a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Persona

**Author's Note:**

> AU and headcanon abound here. Fly away, little birds, if this displeases you.

Yasutora and Chad are two different people. He wishes it was different sometimes, that he could just meld the best parts of each together, but he can't.

Yasutora is the first. Chad is the mask that managed to turn into a personality of its own. At his base is the closest thing to a 'true self' he has, something he can feel transcends the limits of Yasutora and Chad. He doesn't dwell on that part much, though.

As it is, sometimes he shifts from one to the other unconsciously even though one is aware of the other and vice versa. Chad is a damned pushover and he's a pawn for people that neither want nor need him anymore. Yasutora is an asshole with no friends or fucks to give about anything. They each other balance out.

He spends more time than not as Chad because Chad can pay his rent on time and successfully bury the need to kill things. Ironically, he is Yasutora mostly when he kills Hollows. Yasutora hates Shinigami, but Chad can't deal with extensive violence so well. He was created later than Yasutora, who cut his teeth on murderous, insane gang members, drug dealers, dirty cops, and all manner of filth even before puberty.

But yeah. Maybe it's an issue that he's two different people but it's not like it's actually caused him any problems. No need to make a fuss for no reason.

He'll go on living the way he has, and if issues arise, so be it.

It's not like he hasn't uprooted and started over again before.


	2. Apples and Oranges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU. I'm working off vague memories from 5 years ago, but I wanted to write some Orihime/Chad (not romantic) interaction so here it is.

As he sits on the dusty ground in the mid day heat, Orihime kneeling beside him with her palms out, soft golden light gleaming in the air, Yasutora wonders if any of this is truly necessary. It's just an arm. He's had worse.

She seems to be graying around the edges, the light dampening a little bit as sweat pours down her temples. He sighs on the inside and puts his remaining hand on her shoulder.

"That's fine." He knows Orihime well enough by now, so he stands quickly before she has the chance to protest. Unfortunately, he can't make that clean of an escape.

The summer sun has been beating those corpses to hell and back, and already, after maybe an hour, the flies are beginning to buzz though there's no stink yet. With this heat and humidity, Yasutora doesn't think it's going to be long at all until they begin to reek. He places his hand on Orihime's shoulder, and then, when she looks, actually looks for the first time at the victims around them, her eyes go wide and glassy for a few seconds before she stands resolutely, pointedly not taking his hand.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," he murmurs quietly. She flinches, hunches in on herself. Poor girl. This was why no one wanted to include her in the supernatural. Not because she was a healer, not because she couldn't fight well though those things were true. She was human, and not just in race, the way he was.

"H-hai," she whispers, very quietly, just loud enough that Yasutora can hear the doubt in her voice, and something a little like anger too as she tightens her little hands into fists.

"Being a human isn't bad." Because that's what this is about, really. Quincy and Shinigami and Hollows don't, can't really, see things the same way a human can. Too jaded, too used to widespread death and destruction because to them, death is no permanent thing. Suffering is nothing permanent either. There's always another chance because of the damnable soul cycle.

He can see the question in her eyes, the wondering. If he was supposed to be like her, then why could he do things she couldn't? Why could he fight? Why could he walk through this pointless waste of life and not drown in what ifs and guilt for not being able to save them? 

"You...you have humanity. Soul. And they give you decency and perspective." Human in mind, body, and spirit. He's only got one of those things that is arguably human, and the rest is a mystery.

"But you can-" He cuts her off because that is like comparing an apple to...not even an orange. Rust, maybe. They're both red, at least.

"Not a good comparison. Try Ishida. Even Ichigo. Especially Ichigo. He will probably block this out. Focus on defeating the enemy so that he doesn't think about this because it will tear him apart. You though. You face reality head on and you care and then you deal with it. That's important."

He leads her away from the park, step by step, idly surveying the bodies. Orihime seems to be trying very hard to not look, to stare at the sky, but when they pass a young family, she loses it. Collapses onto the ground and bawls, for the young couple, for their infant still in a stroller looking for all the world to be asleep. He lets her do this. This is how she deals with things and it's not his right to make her stop just because he can't feel the same way she does.

She cries until the crickets come out. Yasutora eyes the bodies all around them, and already, their skin has changed colors and knows that they are stiff. He is glad for Orihime's sake that these people are physically intact. The smell and look of heated, congealing blood would have sent her over the edge, at least for a little while.

At the same time, though, he wonders what in the hell Urahara plans to do with these bodies. Then, he realizes that Urahara might not have anything planned at all. What are a hundred human deaths to that man? Nothing, really. And there's been no one around in the time that he and Orihime have been there, which means that he is probably still watching. 

After all, the two of them are one of Ichigo's inspirations for fighting. If they were discovered here and arrested, Ichigo wouldn't go off and fight the next supernatural enemy of the week.

Maybe that would be better, though? If he and Orihime were discovered here, Orihime might be okay, but he would probably be deported within the week, despite being a citizen, even if they eventually let him back. That might keep Ichigo in the Human realm, give him time to consider and think for once instead of being strung along by those parasitic Shinigami.

He sighs, already feeling emotion roiling through his stomach. That's an issue for another time. For now, he has a shaken girl to get home, and becoming visibly upset won't help anyone right now.

As they finally walk away, Orihime shyly slips her hand into his. He glances down at her, sees the sadness in her eyes, and decides that it's harmless. Just reassuring human contact, proof that touch could be rooted in something other than violence. He is familiar with this routine from a year dealing with Ichigo, back before he'd come to terms with casual violence coming at him from every part of his life, from his father to his colleagues, to a girl who used to be his best friend who couldn't express herself anyway except through her fists.

"I wonder...if one day, this will seem like nothing but a nightmare." Yasutora shrugs a shoulder, but he knows in his bones that this will only get worse and worse. Urahara only wants Ichigo, but the rest of the Shinigami are just as big of leeches as Urahara, and there's thousands of them. Maybe even tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

He clenches his teeth and makes himself breathe. He will think about this later, while his arm grows back, when he is in Urahara's training ground again causing as much abject destruction as he can because it makes him feel a little better to mess up that man's space and because rarely, he can see the flash of annoyance in that man's eyes when Yasutora causes trouble in small, subtle ways.

Focus. Orihime's words. She is a healer, a noncombatant if she can help it, but they are past the time she can be treated like fragile glass. If she breaks, he knows she is strong enough to pick herself up and forge herself into something sturdier.

"Shinigami are probably coming back again." She starts and looks up at him through heavy lashes, bright and hopeful until she tries reads the lines in his face. She frowns then.

"That's a good thing, isn't it? Kurosaki-kun will be happy to see his friends again. Especially Kuchiki-chan." She says the last part quietly, as though she has forgotten who she is speaking to. The other parts are tinged with doubt, but Yasutora thinks that's a very good thing. 

"Kuchiki was arrested and nearly executed for keeping a human family from being devoured and no one batted an eyelash." For no one to truly protest this course of action shows that the irrationality and brutality that characterizes the Shinigami was the norm.

Orihime seems to understand his meaning, even if she doesn't agree with him. Yasutora doesn't need agreement: When everything falls apart, he will be able to stand on his morals and values because he tried. That's all he can do, now, is try and fail and get back up again.

"Thank you, Sado-kun." Yasutora nods. 

"Please think about what I've said and what's happened." This is only the beginning, he thinks, looking at Orihime, willing her to understand.

Orihime is a human girl with hopes and dreams, just like every other person in the park was, and she has become one of his few precious people. He can't save her, but she doesn't need him to, no matter what anyone else thinks. All she needs to do is open her eyes, see the bigger picture, and she'll save herself. Yasutora knows it.  
She can see his belief in his eyes, and the reminder that someone knows her strength is enough that she straightens, moving her body out of a defensive, sad slump. 

"I’ll see you, Inoue." He gives a parting nod and leaves her safely at her home.


	3. Significance

He is very unimportant to these people.

He understands why, since most of the time he could be replaced with a sack of rice for all of the bearing he has on the real enemies and threats, but still. It makes him nostalgic.

Chad remembers when he and Ichigo were it. The be all, end all in Karakura. Yasutora remembers the thrilling sadism of being an open menace to society, when people had to watch out for him, consider his movements and vague fancies, so that they could survive.

As each enemy gets stronger, he matters less and less. It's halfway intentional and halfway not, but it...makes him feel. 

In the end, it's a good thing that he isn't an important part of his friend's life anymore because that would make him a cog in the Shinigami machine. And that, as anyone with even a modicum of sense between their ears knows, is a very bad thing indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of these are specific, others are general. This is a 'general' headcanon, and it could probably fit in most of my others.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yasutora always did love cute things.

Yasutora loved animals. Big ones, small ones, the medium ones right in between, ugly ones, and cute ones. Furred, feathered, scaled, and even hairless. Even when the rage of youth had burned at its brightest, threatening to incinerate even himself, Yasutora had always held a bit of softness in his heart for animals.

Yasutora didn’t fight anymore. Not for himself, at least. That’s what he stuck to, the rules, the morals his Abuelo had fashioned for him, since the dawn of manhood.

Why did they have to hurt that kitten?

Yasutora sat under a bridge beneath a foreign sky, deadened concrete above, closing in on him, suffocating him with its pure lack of life, clutching the sticky-soft remains of a poor innocent soul who’d had the rotten luck of being a stray or being the runt that wasn’t fast enough. Pure white fur was stained by sticky, stark blood. 

Why did they have to hurt the kitten?

Yasutora gently sat the corpse down and began tearing at the ground with his hands, never mind the gravel, never mind the blood, the pain, the scratches. The sun moved overhead with aching slowness, shining on despite the tragedy.

A sick, hollow feeling settled in Yasutora’s heart. It chilled his body from his scalp to his toes even though sweat gathered from the humidity and ran down his skin in bloody rivulets.

Finally, he finished and lowered the broken little body, still soft and warm into the grave. He bowed his head and thought a prayer, begging for something. An easier time in death than life for the little cat, maybe. He threw the first fistful of gravel mixed soil. Many more followed until the hole was filled. Yasutora murmured another prayer.

Head lowered, Yasutora began the walk home, wrapping his dark jacket around him and leaving the bodies where they were. Let them suffer the indignity of an improper burial. They deserved nothing better.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be no rhyme or reason here. I have more chapters written, but this is essentially a dumping ground for Chad-based headcanon. I kind of want to see what people like here, so it's an experiment in that regard. Rating will probably go up.


End file.
